Trump pledges more power to match AI investments in Pennsylvania
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President Trump appears at Tuesday's summit in Pittsburgh. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump said Tuesday he's speeding up permitting and making it easier for data centers to connect to the electricity grid in announcing $92 billion in AI and energy investments at a Pennsylvania summit.
Why it matters: Trump's endorsement of building new power plants — and locating data centers right next to them — reflects the growing thirst for electricity from the energy-intensive facilities.
- Trump said the U.S. is already winning the artificial intelligence race with China, and that the new investments are crucial to keeping that status.
- "Today's commitments are ensuring that the future is going to be designed, built and made right here in Pennsylvania and right here in Pittsburgh, and, I have to say, right here in the United States of America," Trump said alongside Pennsylvania Sen. David McCormick.
Driving the news: Trump's remarks at an inaugural AI and energy summit in Pittsburgh backed coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydropower plants to feed AI demand.
- Trump touted $56 billion in investment that he said would feed expanding energy infrastructure in addition to more than $36 billion for new data centers.
- Blackstone announced at the summit it plans to invest $25 billion in American data centers and energy generation to drive AI innovation.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he wants to ensure companies follow through on their pledges.
- "There's a difference between what someone has said in a press release today and when shovels go into the ground in the future. ... We're going to be working with these companies to hold them to the commitments," Shapiro, a Democrat, told reporters.
Between the lines: Both political parties agree that rising energy demand is a national challenge, but energy policy around AI has broken along starkly political lines.
- Trump and Republican lawmakers have seized on rising energy demand to keep coal and gas plants open while seeking to fast-track new fossil fuel plants.
- Democrats respond that wind, solar, and batteries are the cheapest and quickest way to add power supply.
- China is "opening up coal-fired plants all over the place," Trump said Tuesday. "And we're entitled and allowed now to do that, too."
Zoom out: Trump said he supports allowing data centers to build their own power plants to get around delays in expanding the aging power grid.
- "You're going to build your own electric factory, and you're going to make your own electricity," Trump said. "So this way you can have a great plant, and what you'll do is, if you have excess, you can sell it back into the grid."
- U.S. energy regulators have been weighing arguments that so-called co-location arrangements could raise power prices for other grid customers.
- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected a proposal from Talen Energy to feed Amazon data centers with nuclear energy. Some GOP lawmakers have pressed the commission to allow it.
Trump also promised to tackle one of the biggest challenges that both parties have identified: permitting delays.
- He praised EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin for speeding up the process and approving power plants. Zeldin recently began to seek to repeal rules regulating carbon dioxide emissions and mercury and hazardous air pollutants from power plants.
- Speaking to Westinghouse officials, Trump said his nuclear regulators "will be very safe, but we're fast and safe. And you're going to get a whole different group of people."
- The Trump White House is in the midst of a "total and complete reform" of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and recently fired a Democratic commissioner.
— With assistance from Ryan Deto.
